Circular economy solutions within the food system have prioritized prevention. Prevention policies can be formulated as carrots, e.g., waste abatement subsidies, or sticks, e.g., waste disposal taxes, and applied at one or more segments along the food supply chain. We develop a general equilibrium model of the U.S. Midwest that endogenizes food waste decisions and policy responses at key supply chain links. Existing models of circular food systems often fail to endogenize the amount of food waste and seldom apply multiple policies at different food supply chain stages. Our results identify how carrots and sticks differ across targeted supply chain stages. Waste abatement subsidies primarily result in a decrease in waste rates, while a food waste tax leads consumers to adjust both food purchases and waste rates equally. Subsidizing waste abatement can be five times more effective than a food waste tax in reducing food waste, despite both yielding comparable emissions reductions. 88% of emissions reduction caused by a tax derives from reduced food demand (and thus supply). With abatement subsidies, 28% of emissions reduction derives from decreased landfill deposits and 64% from reduced food supply. Our results also suggest that policies aimed at consumers can have four times greater impacts than those applied upstream. Lastly, as their combinations typically generate additive effects, carrots and sticks can complement one another, further informing an optimal policy suite that reduces food waste, while mitigating unintended consequences (e.g., rebound effects or consumption reduction).

Accurate measurement of household food waste is essential for designing and evaluating waste reduction and management policies. However, the mode of waste measurement and the approach to formulating sample populations whose waste is measured can impact accuracy. We find estimates of household food waste differ between measurement approaches applied to the same sample of participants and between the same measurement approach applied to differently recruited samples. The magnitudes of the estimates of per-person once-edible food waste follow the same order as the relative costs of collecting each type of data with the order from low to high being self-administered surveys (SAS) from a national consumer panel (388 g/person/week, $4.42/sample), SAS from locally recruited residents (552 g/person/week, $37.50/sample), and curbside waste composition analysis (WCA) from locally recruited residents (809 g/person/week, $375/sample). This study aims to bridge the gap across measurement and sampling approaches by using machine learning techniques to predict WCA-based edible and inedible food waste from SAS data. Using data from locally recruited respondents with contemporaneous SAS and WCA measurements, we develop least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression models to predict WCA outcomes with data collected via SAS and compare these predictions against a literature based standard adjustment method. Our results show that LASSO models outperform the root mean square error of the standard adjustment method’s predictions by 9 to 12 percent, hence providing improved ability to predict curbside waste amounts from low-cost survey data. Implications for cost-effective evaluation of policies affecting household food waste levels are discussed.

National recycling rates have stagnated at approximately 32 percent in the United States, suggesting that existing programs are not achieving desired levels of diversion. A growing body of field experiments has examined whether informational and norm-based messaging interventions can shift recycling behavior, though most studies rely on self-reported outcomes or stated preferences rather than objective behavioral measures. Using bin-level audit data from a randomized field trial among 200 voluntarily enrolled households in Columbus, Ohio, we find that norm-based and educational message framing produce statistically indistinguishable average effects on recycling fill level, participation, and contamination over a 29-week program. However, the analysis identifies that norm-based messaging outperforms educational messaging when adverse weather raises participation costs, while educational messaging holds up better during high-distraction community events. These patterns point toward adaptive messaging designs that condition content on observable contextual triggers as a promising direction for extracting greater behavioral returns from recycling outreach investment.

Popular society increasingly questions preferences that drive many resource allocations and production decisions, with many groups actively seeking to alter those preferences to achieve changes to resource use. Agricultural and applied economists, who are already equipped with excellent technical skills to undertake consumer preference and valuation studies, must also be challenged to understand post-Beckerian consumer theories that can help guide emerging requests placed upon economists as multi-disciplinary collaborators as non-academic groups press us to join in work involving interventions that work from the implicit assumption that preferences are malleable and potentially endogenous. I call association members to follow our best traditions of studying production dynamics and incorporating emerging theories drawn from or inspired by other disciplines so that we may better interact with the broader scientific community who, as many suggest, finds our insistence on stable and static preferences to limit the usefulness of economists in handling a raft of modern dilemmas. In addition to setting out the history of economists' reticence in considering endogenous preferences, I will outline several threads of emerging literature that can provide structure to professional inquiry in this domain and sketch some emergent cases with implications for the agricultural and resource sectors.

BACKGROUND:Policies seek to both increase fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption and reduce wasted food, though few have investigated if subsidizing FV consumption leads to more waste. OBJECTIVES:We evaluate changes in FV intake, waste, and inventories after free provision of supplemental produce and delivery of a smart coaching intervention to reduce food waste and replace less nutritious foods with FV. METHODS:Adults from households in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, measured food intake and waste for ≥3 d before and after intervention. Households were randomized to an intensive intervention to reduce food waste and replace less nutritious foods with FV (n = 23) or to a control intervention (n = 23). Both received free FV and measured FV inventories before and after intervention. RESULTS:Among control participants, free FV provision led to no significant changes in FV intake (-0.07, P = 0.71) or diet quality measured by Healthy Eating Index (HEI, -1.93, P = 0.33) but did increase FV inventories (4.89 kg, P = 0.04) and the number (9.53 events/period, P < 0.001) and magnitude (100.5 g/event, P = 0.005) of FV waste events, whereas total caloric intake (-132.7 kcal/d, P = 0.04) decreased. After receiving free FV, and compared with controls, treatment participants increased FV intake (0.85 servings/d, P = 0.002) and frozen FV inventories (1.78 kg, P = 0.04). After intervention, treatment did not significantly differ from control in HEI (-2.77, P = 0.34), total caloric intake (147.8 kcal/d, P = 0.13), total FV inventories (-1.83 kg, P = 0.51), plate waste (-22.2 g/person/d, P = 0.09), or the number (-3.57, P = 0.24) or magnitude (-66.4, P = 0.11) of FV waste events. CONCLUSIONS:Providing free FVs without focused interventions to improve diet quality and reduce waste fails to increase FV intake and increases FV waste. Pairing interventions with free FV provision appears critical to translating program resources into improved FV intake, whereas efforts to substantially decrease FV waste require more intensive effort. This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT05061888.

Managers can improve the sustainability of foodservice outlets in many ways, including changes to the types of food served, service ware chosen, and how waste is discouraged and managed. However, given competitive markets, managers must consider how such changes affect consumer patronage and its knock-on effects to firm profits and market-wide environmental impacts. We develop a decisional life cycle assessment (LCA) framework for assessing foodservice interventions that permits calibration of market-wide environmental impacts from the point of view of a single establishment altering its practices and experiencing changes in patronage and costs due to market competition. We simulate market share responses to several restaurant sustainability interventions based upon results from a foodservice field experiment while revenues, operational costs, and environmental impacts are estimated using industry and literature sources. While some interventions, such as serving meals with more vegetables and less meat, reveal large cradle-to-grave environmental impacts via the attributional LCA, the decisional LCA reveals smaller market-wide impacts as some consumers choose competitors who continue to serve meals with the full portion of meat. Within the decisional LCA results, interventions that alter meal elements (less meat, more vegetables) yield larger reductions in environmental impacts than other interventions (compostable plates, composting food scraps, food waste reduction). Decisional LCA articulates the trade-offs between private profitability and environmental impacts to help managers decide how to best improve sustainability in the face of market competition.

Precision medicine approaches have gained attention for their potential to more effectively manage obesity by tailoring diagnosis and treatment strategies to individual characteristics, including genetic background, phenotypes, metabolic profiles, and environmental exposures. The current review evaluates the evidence for precision medicine in weight management by summarizing the proceedings of a Pennington Biomedical Scientific Symposium titled "Precision Prevention, Diagnostics, and Treatment of Obesity: Pipedream or Reality?" This review discusses the extent to which we can classify and predict obesity risk based on individual-level factors; whether we have the diagnostic capability to prospectively identify people who will benefit most from specific interventions; whether prospective trials demonstrate superior prevention and treatment of obesity when precision approaches are applied; and whether evidence is sufficient to guide policy decisions. Expert opinions were presented on the current evidence of precision medicine for obesity to collectively evaluate key barriers and opportunities for implementation of precision approaches in clinical and public health settings.

Food loss and waste (FLW) is a global challenge. Interoperable FLW ontologies will foster more comprehensive data sharing and inform better solutions to reduce and recover excess food and to valorize wasted food and food byproducts. This review reveals that only eight ontologies currently address FLW with most emphasizing valorization. Notably, few are designed explicitly to support FLW reduction, and none facilitate food recovery, which is critical given that reduction and recovery are the preferred means of mitigating FLW. Furthermore, existing FLW ontologies show limited alignment with recognized gold-standard frameworks, for example the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontology (OBO) Foundry, and none support ongoing connectivity to external ontologies, restricting their utility across stakeholder domains. Looking ahead, there is a pressing need to create or expand ontologies that adhere to best practices from relevant foundries to ensure robust linkage and interoperability and undergird structured data ecosystems that support food systems stakeholders in FLW prevention and mitigation. Achieving this goal will require active collaboration among a diverse range of stakeholders, including builders of food systems cyberinfrastructure, scientists, innovators, regulators, public and private funders, community-based organizations, policymakers, and international NGOs as each rely on critical ontological elements to inform decision-making, measure impact, and drive improvement across the food supply chain. Finally, large language models offer promising capabilities for expediting ontology creation, broadening inclusivity in ontology creation, and enhancing the accuracy of resulting data infrastructures.

Objective:The study evaluated changes in household food intake, the waste of fruits and vegetables (FV), and FV inventories after supplemental produce was provided free of charge and in response to a smart coaching intervention to reduce food waste and replace less nutritious foods with FV. Design:Households measured food intake and waste for ≥3 days before and after intervention. Households were randomized to receive either an intervention to reduce food waste and replace less healthy foods with FV or a control intervention. Both groups received free FV and measured FV inventories before and after intervention. Setting:Participants were from the Baton Rouge, Louisiana region and picked up FV at a central location. Participants:46 adults and their household members. Results:Treatment participants increased intake of fruits (0.33 servings/day, p=0.09) and vegetables (0.50 servings/day, p=0.01) compared to the control group. All participants reported a decrease in daily total caloric intake (133 kcal/day, p=0.04), an increase in the number (9.5 events/period, p<0.001) and average magnitude (100.5 g/event, p=0.005) of FV waste events, and an increase in fresh FV inventories (4.1 kg/household, p=0.001) after receiving free FVs. Compared to the control group, treatment participants reported less FV waste during eating occasions (22.2 g/day, p=0.09) and an increase in frozen FV inventories (1.8 kg/household, p=0.04). Conclusions:Providing free FVs without additional intervention does not increase FV intake but does lead to more and larger FV waste events. When coupled with targeted information to improve diet quality and reduce waste, free FV provision can lead to increased FV intake with no significant increase in energy intake or plate waste and smaller increases in the number and magnitude of FV waste events, suggesting that pairing intensive intervention efforts with free FV provision is critical to translate program resources into improved nutrition without increasing waste.

Food waste is a growing concern, particularly as temporary lifestyles and consumption patterns during travel can exacerbate waste. We investigate food wasted by travelers using short-term peer-to-peer rental accommodations. Using data collected via an online survey of 502 U.S. travelers, we use regression analysis to explore food waste patterns across different accommodation and traveler characteristics. The average traveler reports that about $12 of food is purchased but not consumed by their travel party per night of lodging, which equates to about 5.1 % of nightly lodging costs and to $2.3 billion annually spent on groceries, takeout, and restaurant leftovers that are not consumed prior to the end of the trip. This value of uneaten food is significantly positively associated with the nightly cost of lodging and the number of children on the trip. More is wasted during January through March and among travelers 25 years and younger. The length and region of stay and the purpose of travel (leisure vs work) is not significantly associated with daily waste. Only 21 % of lodging hosts provided information about handling uneaten food, while most respondents would find information about how to donate or compost uneaten food at the end of a stay and how to save on groceries during travel to be helpful. This gap between the information provided and deemed helpful by guests indicates potential policy interventions such as providing short-term rental hosts with information inserts listing location-specific food donation and composting options to be shared in rental unit guidebooks.

Sustainable catering aspires to reduce the environmental impacts of foodservice by serving nutritional, safe and environmentally friendly meals. However, there may exist a tension between low-carbon diets and food waste reduction, since sustainable meals may lead to greater waste due to a decrease in consumer satisfaction. The research evaluates the global warming potential of the most and least wasted meals served to Italian hospital patients. It reports the results of a three-year comparative assessment of carbon footprint and food waste measurement based on data collected using questionnaires administered to 3408 patients located in nine hospitals, highlighting the nexus between sustainable choices and customers' satisfaction. On average, food waste at lunch ranges from 8.6% to 13.9%, with the highest peak at 24.6%, whereas at dinner it accounts from 7.0% to 18.4%, with the highest peak at 30.7%. The most wasted foods are eggs, dairy products and pasta. The weekly carbon footprint is 6.9-11.5 kgCO2eq at lunch and 6.4-7.0 kgCO2eq at dinner.

Food wasted in primary and secondary education institutions creates nutritional losses, financial inefficiencies, and environmental degradation. While there is some evidence of how particular interventions within schools may influence the amount of waste created, there is little recent information about typical levels of food waste generated in U.S. primary and secondary schools and how waste correlates with school and meal characteristics. We analyze data reported by more than 100 schools from 24 states as part of the World Wildlife Fund’s Food Waste Warriors project and identify how plate and beverage waste from school lunches are associated with school and meal service characteristics. We find schools that permit students to choose their own amount of milk report 76% less milk waste than those reliant upon individual milk cartons while schools that implement at least one non-curricular intervention (e.g., a table where students can share unopened food) report significantly less produce waste than other schools. We confirm several patterns observed or hypothesized in the literature, including more waste generated by younger students and during the earliest and shortest lunch periods. We document several novel associations including more plate waste at smaller schools, during winter months and in the Northeast region. We find several nuanced patterns of waste related to the prevalence of free and reduced meal service and whether all meal elements are offered versus served. While this study cannot support rigorous evaluation of intervention effectiveness, it provides insights into school and program characteristics that may pose challenges for schools interested in reducing student plate waste.

In order to achieve U.S. food waste reduction goals, changing the behavior of consumers will be essential as similar to 50 % of wasted food occurs in residential settings. Segmenting consumers by their food waste patterns can help direct consumer campaigns, however no such analysis has been conducted in the United States. We analyze the food waste attitudes and behaviors of 1086 U.S. consumers who responded to an online survey by using k-means clustering and post-hoc sample weighting to ensure national representativeness. We identify four distinct consumer segments: Conscientious Conservers (22 % of households, 10 % of total food waste generated), Harried Profligates (26 % of households, 38 % of waste), Unrepentant Drink Wasters (21 % of households, 10 % of waste), Guilty Carb Wasters (31 % of households, 33 % of waste). For each segment we identify and discuss the constellation of attitudes, behaviors and characteristics that distinguish them from other groups and then postulate intervention and communication strategies that may prove fruitful for targeting messages in a manner that advance national food waste reduction goals in a cost-effective manner. For example, we recommend targeting campaign resources on the Harried Profligates segment, who report 45 % more wasted food than the sample average yet hold multiple attitudes conducive to supporting food waste reduction so long as the interventions can support this cluster's lack of planning skills in a manner that does not exacerbate the time pressure they report facing in day to day life.

Agriculture is a major contributor to eutrophication across the world. Such is the case for Lake Erie where P loads support recurrent harmful cyanobacterial blooms. To mitigate these blooms, targets have been set for total and dissolved reactive P (TP/DRP) loads during the annual and March-July periods. To accelerate progress towards meeting these goals, a targeted management approach aimed at the fields with the greatest P loads has been suggested. A public-private partnership recruited legacy-P fields to quantify P loads in runoff by leveraging the positive relationship between soil test P (STP) and discharge P concentrations. Legacy-P fields were previously defined as having one or more zones with STP >100 ppm (two-fold above agronomic needs); all others were termed agronomic-P fields. Edge-of-field monitoring was performed during 2021 on 11 legacy-P and 13 agronomic-P fields (total n = 24). Legacy-P fields had 2-fold greater March-July DRP loads but only 0.5-fold greater annual TP loads, though both were statistically nonsignificant effects (g approximate to 0.5). Effects were smaller (g approximate to 0.2) for March-July TP and annual DRP. Over half of the legacy-P fields lacked meaningful (<1% of total) surface loads with little to no observed runoff. Further analysis revealed that legacy-P fields had a stronger effect on subsurface discharge, with a statistically significant effect (g = 0.81, p = 0.05) on the March-July DRP concentrations. Statistical significance in this study was obscured due to a large degree of variance and limited sample size, however, the differences reported here could have practical importance to managers working to address eutrophication across Lake Erie and other watersheds.

PurposeFreezing extends the shelf life of food. Home freezing of fresh foods and the purchase of frozen foods have been advocated as approaches to reduce food waste in US households. This paper discusses how commonly US households apply these practices, quantifies frozen food waste and relates these practices to food waste.Design/methodology/approachWe add questions to the summer 2022 wave of the US Household Food Waste Tracking Survey. The novel survey data provide important baseline information and household behaviours, such as food waste, home freezing of fresh food and the purchase of frozen foods. We analyse the association among these behaviours from more than 1,000 US households.FindingsWe find that US household wastes about 26 g per person per week of food that was once frozen, which is about 6% of all household food waste. The finding indicates that a small portion of food waste in US households comes from frozen food. Vegetables and meats are the most commonly discarded frozen foods. Among the frozen items reported as discarded, about 30% were purchased as frozen rather than purchased fresh and then frozen at home by the consumer and about 30% more were reported as discarded from the refrigerator rather than directly from the freezer. The findings are important for informing strategies to reduce household food waste.Research limitations/implicationsWhile the data provide important baseline information and correlate the use of freezing with lower waste levels, more work is needed to understand if interventions encouraging frozen food purchase or home freezing would reduce household food waste.Originality/valueWe provide unique, detailed information about the quantity of frozen food waste in US households and the relationships between consumer food waste and the practices of frozen food purchasing and home freezing.

Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonists are gaining attention as a potential treatment for obesity. While studies have shown that these medications greatly impact dietary habits, their relationship to consumer food waste is unexplored. We analyzed data from 505 U.S. consumers who self-report GLP-1 medication use and found that 25% agree that they waste more food since beginning the medication with 61% disagreeing with this statement. Respondents are less likely to agree with this statement if they have been on the medication a longer time and more likely to agree if they report experiencing nausea since beginning the medication. Several dietary changes are also significantly associated with self-reported changes in food waste since starting the medication. With previous literature finding GLP-1’s significant impact on individual food consumption and dietary choices, our findings suggest that the effects of this novel class of anti-obesity medications may cast a significant impact on food waste patterns. With the potential for widespread adoption of these medications, and given that approximately one-third of food in the United States is wasted by consumers, understanding the interaction of these two consumer trends is critical for projecting their joint impact on the food system.

Influenza A virus transmission between pigs and humans has been reported periodically worldwide, and spillover events across the animal-human species barrier could lead to the next influenza pandemic. Swine exhibitions serve as a unique interface conducive to zoonotic disease transmission due to extensive commingling of pigs and humans for prolonged periods of time. The majority of zoonotic influenza A virus transmission in the United States has been linked to swine exhibitions, leading some to suggest additional controls for influenza A virus at the swine-human interface. Determining the value of the exhibition swine industry and gauging the financial impacts influenza A virus outbreaks could have on society, helps to inform adoption decisions of mitigation recommendations. This study estimates the total value of the exhibition swine industry in the United States and calculates the predicted costs of the most extreme mitigation strategy, cancelling swine exhibitions to reduce zoonotic influenza A virus transmission. Mixed methods, including a survey, were used to collect data and inform the study model. We estimated that the direct economic impact of the exhibition swine sector in 2018 was $1.2 billion. If pig shows were to be cancelled for one year, the estimated direct economic impact would be $357.1 million. A permanent, > 3-year ban on swine exhibitions would result in a $665 million economic impact, which is a 45% reduction from baseline. The direct economic impact of cancelling the swine show circuit could not be determined, as youth exhibitors may pursue alternative activities that cannot be precisely accounted for. However, the estimated loss to the swine industry justifies seeking enhanced mitigation to prevent disease transmission. Moreover, economic losses secondary to exhibition cancellations may explain hesitancy to participate in active influenza A virus surveillance efforts.